


The Beginning of the End

by ErrantStarlight



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adventure, Angst and Fluff, Asking Questions, Canon Divergence, Complicated enemies, Dark Rey, Duality of the Soul, Eventual Smut, Family, Hope, Identity, Inner Journey, Multi, Slow Burn, This Is The Way, because the end of the saga left me unsatisfied and depressed, jj made me do it, just having fun exploring the characters and the story, making amends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22092877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErrantStarlight/pseuds/ErrantStarlight
Summary: A small intro starting from the Throne Room with Rey's Pov.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	1. It was Real

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this after TLJ, but never really got back to it because I felt I couldn't do justice to the story and characters. 
> 
> Clearly, the Rise of Skywalker proved me wrong. I rarely share what I write, but reylos need something to soothe the pain. 
> 
> Hope it makes you feel what I felt writing it.

You are not alone. That short and clear. How long had she ached—and longed—to hear such words of comfort,when it was too hard to scratch one single mark—over hundred beneath it—in her walls of steel. A simple, yet powerful statement indeed, made of words that felt like magic for just one moment in time. Understanding, that every tear she had shed, was meaningful in the end.

Oh, understanding! That which she sought so desperately when surveying an endless horizon of heat and sand that was called Jakku. Nowhere, in a galaxy ruled by blood. Back even then, when she was a little girl, blinded by hope in something she knew wasn't true, but instead, a fabrication of her own mind. A shapeless body hiding under the surface like a monster. The ugliness of her shadow roaming hot deserts in complete overwhelming solitude. Dunes that seemed to tower and swallow her into the hollow nothingness the land was. A graveyard. A place where all you can hear is your own heart and thoughts lashing together against your mind.

But she had fantasized about it. Whenever she looked up to the night sky—filled with quivering lights that held worlds she would never see—she thought : _Maybe if I learn how to fly I can go too._

She knew they were silly thoughts. Secrets nobody cared besides her. Secrets that weren’t worth portions. A meal. That's why she kept them locked in the deepest part of her mind, behind every door and wall she could build upon her memories. They were hers and hers alone. They kept her alive.

And alive was not dead yet in Jakku.

“I know what I have to do,” he said, voice hoarse, empty of emotion, dark eyes almost cold; yet not completely frozen. As if there was something almost gentle within them, behind the lurking shadows, barely perceptible, but living.

Rey kept her hazel eyes on his. Pleading to what hid behind those shadows. Pleading to that part of him she saw back in Ahch-To by flames, rain, crashing waves that filled the land with foam meters below. She dared to thought she could touch his face, his raven hair, all of it through their shared bond—across thousand light years of distance—as if they were next to each other. Tears shimmered in his eyes when she told him how utterly destroyed she felt by the answer she found within the cave. A truth that offered no shelter.

No safety.

“You think he will turn, you pathetic child?” she heard Snoke asking behind her back, sardonic in his throne. He was keeping her restrained with the force like an old puppet. An object. Something that did not have a volition on its own. “I cannot be betrayed. I cannot be beaten. I see his every intent, his every move.”

 _No._ _It was real._ Rey thought, feeling her eyes scorch, lips trembling, never letting her eyes lose sight of his. _I know it was real._

“Yes,” he hissed, tasting her pain like an echo through the force, making the knot of her throat tighter than ever before. She was ripe fruit about to fall from the tree. “I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true. And now, foolish child, he ignites it and kills his true enemy!”

She dropped down, gasping for breath, heart smashing her bones.

Not dead yet.

She looked back as soon as she could, lightly trembling in shock, disoriented.

Luke's lightsaber speared Snoke from one side to another. The azure blade of light pierced his waist as he gasped in pain. He had narrated his own death—not hers—and she saw him spending his last seconds of life with eyes full of disbelief when Ben beckoned the blade to come their way.

The lightsaber gashed out of Snoke, slicing him in a half. Rey heard the guresome noise of entrails being ripped apart and lifted her hand to meet the blade in the air. She clenched the grip, standing up. The Preatorian guards unsheathed their weapons in sync.

It was a storm.

Rey sensed their emotions shrouding them like a grey cloud turned into a tornado. The thirst for blood and revenge boiling beneath their red impenetrable armours.

And yet it happened.

That cacophony—built on a score of wrath and hatred—became muffled in her ears when she locked her eyes with Ben’s—his mouth slightly opened, his eyebrows softening for one brief second before turning fully resoluted.

He ignited his lightsaber, red light bathed his face with jolting sparks.

She was feeling it again. The same connection she felt back in Starkiller base when they entered each others minds.

An awakening.

The blurry shapes grew closer, but this time they both knew exactly what they had to do.

They stood back-to-back.

Ready to counter their charge as one.


	2. The Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They left after selling her like another piece of ship equipment, like a piece of garbage. 
> 
> But there was no refuge from something like that.

White smoke.

Ben ignited the saber Rey sent flying his way. He sunk the blade of light into the front part of the helmet of the guard without mercy; his pupils were blazing, carving when he shattered the center of the crimson piece of armor. All left behind was an empty socket. A hollow aftermath. He got rid of the arm that tried to choke him while staring at her, sweating and gasping for breath among the carnage surrounding them. It was a crude battlefield of corpses that now laid at their feet while golden flames rained over their heads.

In Jakku, Rey learned one needed to defend themselves in order to survive for long. If you were weak—and lowered your head—you got eaten by the bigger fellows. Either thugs, bandits, or other scavengers. It didn’t matter to them as long as they got what they wanted from you. That’s why you had to handle yourself effectively even if you were an orphan, because those who had been born stronger and more intimidating were the ones in charge. Or if you lacked those traits, credits and portions were always the answer to make people follow your command without question. It was the kind of common knowledge everybody had. Rey did her best to stay away from them. Except from Unkar Plutt, who was always behind her back, reminding her of who paid for her garbage. One glance to those on top like him—and you knew exactly where you stood. However, confrontation cannot be avoided forever. And sometimes? Sometimes hurting others, and being sharp as a blade, was the best course of action there. It didn’t make her feel proud, but it worked. It kept you in one piece.

It kept you breathing.

But these guards… She couldn’t help but wonder if they were like Finn during those seconds in which she fought to recover her breathing, her heart still beating madly with adrenaline that would soon wear off. These people could very much be children robbed from their families and raised into killing machines. Their armours were hurting them. She could tell by the electromagnetic waves coming out of them.

She breathed deeply.

Should she really feel guilty about this? When she lifted her gaze again, her eyes met Ben's. He was alive. Wasn't that enough right now? She could run to him, wrap her arms around his neck, embrace him—

The fleet.

She looked at the oculus, then at Ben, then once more at the transparent glob.

How could she forget. There were so few left... But they could still stop the attack, saving the remaining ones.

“The fleet!” she yelled, running towards it. “Order them to stop firing! There is still time to save the fleet!”

She turned, a cold shiver running down her back.

Ben stood in front of the corpse of his former master, flames dripping down non stop from the banners and curtains of the First Order. He looked lost. More than he did in the turbolift when she called him by his name. It was as if he was empty and broken into pieces that didn’t fit together anymore. A wire that had been cut from its source of power and shocks with the remaining energy.

“Ben?” she asked softly.

“It’s time to let the old things die," he said while staring at the dead body of the once master. There was something off tingling at the back of her neck, where the skull and spine connect. "Snoke," he continued, looking to her, fastening her breathing. She did not know if it was fear or something else. She had always lived in constant alert, and this was no exception. "Skywalker, the Sith," he walked slowly. There was something magnetic about his approach. He was holding Luke's saber in his left hand, "the Jedi, the rebels... Let it all die." He came to a stop. “Rey,” he swallowed, extending his hand, breathing deeply, “I want you to join me."

Rey felt her stomach strangling her, muscles unresponsive, blood at her feet.

No. This was not... The Force had showed her. Ben Solo was standing on the light with her, not in the dark. They were—

"We can rule together," he interrupted her thought process, "bring a new order to the galaxy.”

_No... Please no..._

“Don’t do this Ben,” she said, trying to keep her voice from breaking. “Please don’t go this way.”

His dark eyes widened and he shrunk back. “No… no. You are still holding on,” he rose his voice.“Let go!”

Rey fought every tear welling in her eyes, threatening to drip down the curve of her freckled tanned face. Ben walked closer to her then, shortening the distance. "Do you wanna know the truth about your parents?"

Her heart stopped, lips trembling, sight blurry.

_I..._

His face softened in an instant, eyes half closed.

“Or have you always known?” he asked; voice low. A single tear dripped down her cheek. “And you've just hidden it away...” He walked closer. “You know the truth.”

_Don't say it, Ben. If you do, it becomes real, and I don’t want it to be real, because that would mean—_

“Say it,” he offered, waiting for her to answer, but she could not. “Say it,” he nodded to encourage her.

Rey looked down. A churning struggle inside her. It pressed against her chest, making it tight and heavy.

_If I say it… I can't never go back._

She looked at him, breathed in, opened her mouth to speak.

_I can't never go back._

“They were nobody,” she sobbed as another piece of curtain got on fire, showering them both in a rain of sparkling flames.

“They were filthy junk traders,” he snapped, burrowing his brow, looking down as he shook his head in disbelief. “They sold you off for drinking money.”

She swallowed those words as if she had said them herself. Some nights her mind had worded them too. _They sold you for drinks. They cared nothing for you. They showed it again, and again. Even before that day. You were no worth their love. Some parents simply don't love their children._ And—like her midnight thoughts—those words were crude and raw, with not a single remark that could mask the ugly truth that had been her reality for a decade. No excuse to justify what they did to her.

“They are dead in a paupers grave in the Jakku desert.”

Oh, but she knew! She knew it so well! And even then she felt her heart breaking into hundred pieces all the same. A lightsaber through her heart would have hurted far less. What made the wound ache more was that she couldn't pat herself on the shoulder and say : _They will come back for you. They are just off on a trip. Maybe they left to protect you. They were good people_.

No.

They left after selling her like another piece of ship equipment, like a piece of garbage.

But there was no refuge from something like that. Only pain and anger and sadness she didn't want to feel anymore.

“You have no place in this story,” he continued, his eyes still surprisingly soft. “You come from nothing,” he shook his head. “You are nothing.”

She looked down, drowning in her tears and the knot in her throat. He wasn't wrong. She was no hero. That's why she looked for Luke and him. There was no reason but fortuity that led her there. What was she in comparison to everyone else?

She was no one.

“But not to me.”

Rey looked to him, speechless. They were both broken like junk and ships are crumbling in Jakku. His words didn't weight her like an insult would have when they were delivered with the same intention as the ones spoken before the fire in the hut.

He extended his hand towards her. “Join me,” he said low. “Please.”

But could she? She looked to his trembling hand and back to him. Ben seemed fragile, more than she thought him capable of only a couple standard cycles ago. He was genuinely pleading to her.

You cannot say yes, reason said to her. You cannot so long he stands in the darkness. You cannot when he seeks to destroy everything. You cannot when he pretends to be someone else.

But then, Rey realized a mistake. One caused by brashness and impulsivity. She thought his choice was easy, when it was not. It had never been easy, thus, the conflict tearing him apart. She was committing the same mistake as Luke. She committed it since she left Ahch-To without listening to him. She came here to make the choice for Ben, to tell him who to be in the light. But that's not how this worked. In fact, when they fought together, she felt both sides of the force within her. In perfect harmony. She felt her darkness and her light. She felt her shadows, kept hidden until now. She felt her present, her past, her future like a line which is shaping. Her serenity, her impulse. Her compassion, her hatred.

And more importantly.

Those same things in Ben.

If the vision she saw was truthful—and Stars know she wanted it to be truthful—Ben would stand in the light one day. When he wants, but not when she tells him to do so. After all, when had she ever really listened to what others told her to do? That choice, that decision, that change. It was all in him and no one else.

“I... I can't follow that path,” she offered back, placing the tips of her fingers on his gloved hand, gently, but clasping their hands, begging to whatever lurked out there to help the Resistance hold on a few seconds more the firing of the First Order Destroyers, Dreadnoughts and Cruisers. That’s all Rey needed right now to make Ben realize it didn’t have to go this way. They didn't have to fight. “But that doesn't mean we have to part ways,” she wiped her tears with her free hand. “We wouldn't have to be alone again. You could join me instead, go somewhere else, away from here.”

“Join you,” he said staring at their hands, but soon the anger returned even if leashed. “And those you call friends? Those who—”

He hesitated, and Rey took the chance.

“I would be with you,” she said softly, appeasing the increasing panic that surged within her when more fire was shot against the fleet. “Like I said before, you felt what I felt when our hands touched... Even before. In the forest. I’m not asking you to be someone you are not. What I'm asking you is to discover who you really are. Who we really are. We don't need to destroy when we can repair.”

He listened intently. Rey felt the conflict within him. This time stronger than before. The pull of the light was strong. She could feel Ben Solo battling against Kylo Ren. The one he pretended to be, but was not. The mask he wore like a second skin.

“If you don’t believe me,” she said clasping his hand more in a final attempt to make him see reason, “then look inside my mind and see for yourself.”

He opened his mouth to speak—but looked away, pulling her close to him.

Everything went white.

Explosions all over the starship left her deaf in less than seconds. A ringing sound pierced through her eardrums like the pointy edge of a hot knife.

_What—?_

Glass shattered, the floor trembled. Rey felt Ben's hand holding hers. She lifted her face—eyes half closed yet by the light that blinded her. He had his other hand extended in the air, keeping the failing pieces of the ceiling from crushing them down with the force. But how much could he do alone? She had to help him.

_Reach out_ , she heard Luke’s voice in her memories, and did so, looking at Ben for guidance, focused. She closed her eyes and felt her surroundings like she did in Ahch-To, allowing herself to be embraced by the concept of life in its totality.

Rey sensed the air within the ship—tainted with gases of broken pipes and fires. She felt the lifes of those who were there, those who were wounded, those who were dying; those who were filled with fear and anguish as the ship was destroyed. She reached out even more, blending with space itself. She thought she could almost touch the stars with her mind—her essence—their warming glowing light tingling on her fingers like running electricity. She heard the sounds of places far away as if she was standing on them. The wind... the waves... the birds... It was like feeling the universe within her.

And she felt Ben too. What made him—him. He was moving through the same energy as her, the same binding. The force was another limb of his body. So natural. She lifted her hand, and tried to mimic him by letting the force do what it had to do. She followed its rhythm. Its pattern. When she opened her eyes, the fallen pieces of the roof had stopped moving completely. It was as if time itself had stopped. She didn't know what to say. What to think. It was... amazing. Like a magic trick. Her mouth went open in awe while Ben slid the pieces to each side of the room, letting them drop slowly so that nothing would caught more unnecessary fire.

She lowered her hand, smiling like a damn fool. For a moment, forgetting all the bad surrounding her.

No pain. No battle. Everything was just right.

She turned her face to meet his.

And Stars above…

He smiled too.

Rey felt her heart jumping out of her mouth. A bubbling sensation rising from her stomach that made her feel almost sick. She had never felt something like this before. What this man did to her...

It scared her.

Another rain of sparks fell down upon them, making her come back to reality. She looked around—and gazed at the windows—astonished by the view, not letting Ben's hand go. The impossibly big Dreadnought was completely destroyed. Cut in a half like its former owner. “This kind of damage,” she thought out loud. “Only another ship big enough could have done it.” She shook her head at the idea. “Of course… Crashing a Cruiser onto this one… That’s the only way… ” Rey let that sink in like a pebble in a pool of oil. Whoever had crashed the ship had done it to earn the Resistance time.

She swallowed.

Rey had prayed for a miracle to happen, but this?

She looked at Ben. “We need to get out of here.”

“There is a escape pod,” he said plainly, nodding towards the other side of the room. “Take it.”

She drew her brows together. "But... you are coming with me...?"

There was no answer to her question beyond his eyes staring down at her. His face was like a mask, not letting show too much.

“I'm not leaving without you.”

“The Supremacy has fallen. Half our fleet too,” he said gazing at the dozen other ships that had been destroyed by the same thing, calling Luke’s saber back to his hand. “It won't take long until someone comes here to find the Supreme Leader dead,” he continued.

“But—“

“Go.”

Rey stubbornly held his hand tighter, not wanting to let go.

_Don't they have security footage? They will know It was him._

“Promise me,” was all she could word, not daring to glimpse into his eyes directly. “Promise me we will meet again. That you will be safe.”

His jaw went slack, his brows knit down, his eyes glistened while fixed on her.

“Promise me,” she repeated more firmly this time.

He breathed out. Rey felt him reaching to her mind instead through the force, a slight brush against her forehead like a question. She let him in, and heard his voice within her. I promise, he said—and part of her felt immediately guilty, heat rushing to her face like a hot breeze of arid air. She nodded—and with throbbing pain—let his hand go, rushing towards the escape pod, trying not to stare at the corpses filling the room as she strode over.

“Rey,” Ben called with a deep tone of voice.

She turned back immediately. He was holding Luke’s saber towards her with his left hand.

“I thought you said it was yours,” she said confused.

“And yet it called to you,” he said rephrasing her own words when she arrived and he took the saber from her.

Rey pursed her lips into a thin line, reached out, and pulled the saber towards her.

“Stay alive,” she demanded.

“If only it was that easy,” he smirked sardonic.


End file.
